BrandPost: Digital Innovation Demands Security-driven Networking
Today’s networks are distributed across so many devices and environments, many of them temporary and all of them in a constant state of flux, that the notion of a perimeter has been almost completely abandoned. This transition has largely been the result of an application-based business model. Users—both employees and consumers—require immediate and reliable access to critical applications and streaming services at any time, from any location, on any device.
To achieve this, most organizations have transformed their networks to a collection of edges. In addition to the LAN edge, there is the new WAN edge, the multi-cloud edge, the distributed datacenter edge, the mobile edge, and most recently due to the rapid shift to work-from-home, a huge surge in the home office edge. And multi-edge computing (MEC)—a distributed, open IT architecture that features decentralized processing power and a virtualized network platform—is right around the corner. Powered by 5G-enabled devices and infrastructure, MEC leverages mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to process data locally rather than being transmitted to a datacenter.